So there was this Syrian blogger, supposedly a gay girl living in Damascus, who got a lot of attention recently, as her blog was one of the few direct eyewitness accounts of the Syrian revolution and subsequent government crackdown. This attention reached a fever pitch when it looked like she had been abducted, perhaps by government agents. But several bloggers smelled a rat however; she sounded slightly too good to be true, certain details didn’t add up and people started digging in “Amina”‘s background. Surprise surprise, it was all a hoax and “Amina” wasn’t a Syrian lesbian living in Damascus, but a straight American douche called Tom MacMaster.
Yesterday the shit hit the fan as various people closed in on his story, so he dropped the mask and posted a non-apology:
I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone — I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.
I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in thıs year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience.
This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism.
However, I have been deeply touched by the reactions of readers.
Which was followed by a longer explenation today which I won’t bother with. Even in his apology it’s all about him and his feelings, with no thoughts spared to the people he decieved or the damage he has done. There’s no awareness whatsoever that his actions might have consequences beyond the internet. As Daniel Nassar put it, an actually existing Syrian LGBT activist puts it:
Because of you, Mr. MacMaster, a lot of the real activists in the LGBT community became under the spotlight of the authorities in Syria. These activists, among them myself, had to change so much in their attitude and their lives to protect themselves from the positional harm your little stunt created. You have, sir, put a lot of lives, mine and some friends included, in harm’s way so you can play your little game of fictional writing.
This attention you brought forced me back to the closet on all the social media websites I use; cause my family to go into a frenzy trying to force me back into the closet and my friends to ask me for phone numbers of loved ones and family members so they can call them in case I disappeared myself. Many people who are connected to me spent nights worrying about me and many fights I had with my family were because you wanted to play your silly game of the media.
You feed the foreign media an undeniable dish of sex, religion and politics and you are now leaving us with this holier-than-thou semi-apologize with lame and shallow excuses of how you wanted to bring attention to the right people on the ground. I’m sorry, you’re not on the ground, you don’t know the ground and you don’t even belong to the culture of the people on the group.
You took away my voice, Mr. MacMaster, and the voices of many people who I know. To bring attention to yourself and blog; you managed to bring the LGBT movement in the Middle East years back. You single-handedly managed to bring unwanted attention from authorities to our cause and you will be responsible for any LGBT activist who might be yet another fallen angel during these critical time.
I’m outraged, and if I lived in a country where I can sue you, I would.
MacMaster’s little stunt is born out of an attitude that denies the reality of the people on the other side of his computer screen, an attitude you see a lot on the internet. It’s clear he never thought about the impact his lies might have had on the lives of real Syrians, gay or otherwise, because he’s clearly never really believed that what he did on the internet might matter “in real life”. It’s also clear that despite his protestations, MacMaster never saw the Syrian and other Middle Eastern activists and bloggers who fell for his story and became concerned about “Amina” as real people, or he could not have done this. These were the actions of a psychopath, but it’s the sort of psychopathy that all of us are vulnerable to on the internet, as it is so easy to stop believing in the humanity of people who aren’t part of your own social circle. Proof for this can be found in every collision between two separate net cultures, going back to e.g. the invasion of rec.pets.cats by alt.tasteless in the prehistory of the internet, 1993. Internet as a game, rather than as a way to communicate, where because you’re manipulating symbols on a screen it’s easy to forget you’re dealing with people.
